I have used XAMPP awhile ago and never had any problems... but now I do.

I have everything installed via the ZIP file, Apache and SQL are running just fine. When igo to my root folder/files it works great, but when I try to go another level in it redirects the file to an install.php???

## DocumentRoot: The directory out of which you will serve your# documents. By default, all requests are taken from this directory, but# symbolic links and aliases may be used to point to other locations.#DocumentRoot "F:/xampplite/htdocs"

I initially moved the files after downloading them from C:/ into F:/xampplite/htdocs. After they were moved I did run the xampp-setup.bat.

Try clearing your browser's cache and use the setting to fetch the pages at every visit.
The cache is your worst enemy when testing local sites as you are more likely to be served a cached page than a new page.